


That's What Being Friends Is About

by Schnozzbun



Category: Mother 2: Gyiyg no Gyakushuu | EarthBound
Genre: Also chubby ness is canon, Angst, Bullying, Early Game, Fat Shaming, Fluff, Fluffy Ending, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Paula Polestar WILL kick your butt, platonic, platonic nesspaula
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 20:53:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18836578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schnozzbun/pseuds/Schnozzbun
Summary: Early game Earthbound. The introverted and shy Ness recounts the first time he meets the bold and brazen Paula. The two realise how important their friendship is, and get to know each other better in Threed.Fluffy friendship stuff. These kids are awkward and opinionated, but there for each other and stronger together.





	That's What Being Friends Is About

Paula had a fierceness in her eyes, in her words. It wasn’t her wit or energy that made her magnetic, but her competence. In the face of any problem or dilemma, where most would falter, or stop to weigh pros and cons; everything for Paula was immensely obvious, to the point of frustration when others couldn’t see it. It was always: “Well clearly we’ll do this.”

Like an expert tightrope walker, she walked the fine line between confidence and arrogance. The reason she never fell into the latter was the way in which she spoke to people. She would always pay attention in a way that made _you_ feel confident and witty. Any respect or fondness directed at you felt like a priceless treasure to be cherished.

These were the things that Ness had learned on his travels with Paula. He’d never expected to meet someone like that, let alone when he entered that rickety cabin under the looming precipice of Peaceful Rest Valley. Stepping inside, his skin had broken into goose-bumps at the sudden cold. A gawky teenaged girl lay behind haphazard iron bars that bisected the one-room-cabin. She was around Ness’s age, though considerably taller. She sat against the bars, facing away from him. The slightest creak of the floor boards made her whip her head back, eyes staring straight into Ness. That was when he first witnessed her fierceness. It was an intensity that Ness would never quite get used to, especially when Paula summoned waves of fire, ice, and lightning.

“Ness.” There was only certainty in her voice.

“Y-Yes,” Ness said, in the exact opposite tone. At first glance, Paula had the hair and frame of girls who would see people like him and giggle behind their hands when they passed by.

Ness wouldn’t call himself a knight in shining armour. He was affectionately regarded as ‘big-boned’ by his mom, tentatively referred to as ‘kinda chubby’ by Tracy, and frankly called ‘that other fat kid’ at school.  

Stocky, wearing t-shirts that were always too tight around his shoulders, he’d never won anything. He’d been boo’d once in a class race for PE because it looked he was about to come first. He hadn’t.

He was no knight – more like the short sidekick who always had a smile on his face and never gave away how much things got to him.

Paula closed her eyes. “Thank God.” She rose to her feet. “Don’t just stand there, you’ll have to know where the key is and I don’t wanna keep talking loud. Come closer, Ness.”

Again, it was this feeling of competence that Paula instilled that made Ness lose all his fear and uncertainty. Instead, he began to feel the excitement of meeting someone he knew he’d grow to be fast friends with for the first time in a while.

And so it was.

 

* * *

 

“But you’re not friends anymore?”

“Nope.”

Ness and Paula sat in room 2B of the Threed Sunset Hotel. They left the corner lamp on, leaving a warm puddle of yellow light against the soothing blue-dark of a moonlit sky.

The encounters before Paula’s rescue had been imprinted across Ness's mind the last few days. The town’s uncannily cheery people, the sea of blue cultists he had to wade through, having faith that a tiny badge would save him from being obliterated by lightning. But, despite each event's peculiar and often life-threatening nature, these weren't the moments that were currently rolling around in his head.

He couldn't stop thinking about the last time he saw Pokey.

It was the moment after Ness had defeated Carpainter and dispelled the dark-blue shadow over Happy Happy village. Pokey had a new clarity in his eyes, shining underneath that ratty fringe of hair. He'd come to apologise, and it really had sounded genuine. He carried an authenticity that brought Ness back to years ago. Back to when the two were best friends: daily play dates, walking King together, dancing to his dad’s old rock-and-roll records.

But, with it also came the pain. How Pokey began to change. How he started to make fun of him, but beg him to stay; roughly playing with his toys, apologising, but doing it again and again; telling a joke about his mom and dad that made Ness lash out and never want to talk to him again.

That same pain came back, and Ness had only stared at the ground in the face of Pokey’s apologies.

He’d said nothing.

Was that the right thing to do?

Yes, according to Paula. She wished she was there to give that snotty brat a piece of her goddamn mind.

“How were you friends in the first place?” Paula asked, punting him back into the present.

“Well, the two of us were actually really similar,” Ness said. “We got picked last for teams, came last in races. Nobody ever wanted to play with us, so we were kind of friends because no one else really wanted to.

“It was great at first, but, after a while I realised that what Pokey thought was a friend was different from what I wanted. He started to change after his parents got money. He was always trying to prove he was better.”

Paula said, “Well I guess yeah. I bet deep down he always thought he was better, and his parents getting rich only confirmed it. It’s sociological,” she said with the confidence of someone who'd heard the word once from the TV and definitely knew what it meant.

Ness only hummed in reply. He rested his chin on his knees, replaying that moment with Pokey over and over again.

Paula saw this. Ness was zoning out - again. She felt the silence settle around them like a soft blanket, descending and covering their heads.

She kicked it off by saying: “So, how about that bat? You like baseball much?”

Ness’s eyes lit up like he’d been hooked to a power plug and had come alive with electricity. “Like it? I _LOVE_ it! My whole family used to play it in our backyard. My favourite part’s batting. There’s nothing like it! Hey, when this whole world saving thing’s over, maybe our families could play together!”

“That would be great. Why else do you like it?”

“Well—”

On and on Ness continued. Paula’s eyes softened as she smiled. She hated people feeling glum. Adults would tell her she gets it from her mother, maternal instinct and all that ya-hoo, but she thought she got it from her dad. Dad hated confrontation, and would sweat bullets whenever he so much as took too long to stuff the change back into his wallet at the grocery store. She didn’t like when people felt sad about themselves. Firstly, 'cause it was dumb, and secondly 'cause it made her feel like she was failing. Even though they were the same age, Ness really reminded her of some of the kids in the preschool. You just wanted to squash their faces in your hands and yell “STOP BEING SAD! YOU’RE GREAT.”

Paula rested her head in her hands listening to Ness mirthfully ramble about sport. She heard words like ‘stats,’ ‘screwballs,’ and ‘pop flies’, understanding what they meant through context, but not especially interested. However, she listened because she could see how deeply Ness cared.

Eyes closed, enjoying the warmth of the room, of feeling awfully grown up, of getting to know a new friend, she said, “I suppose you were the star of the baseball team.”

Paula heard nothing.

Opening her eyes, she felt like shards of ice were being pushed into her chest as she saw the excitement drain from Ness’s body.

“Not really.” He tucked his legs and rested his chin on his knees again.

Ness explained that he barely left the bench. He _could_ bat, it was just running. No matter how hard he tried to pump his legs, he _always_ got out-ed by the ref and their whistle. The worst was being able to _feel_ the disappointment and eye-rolling from his teammates. Even from his coach.

The fun was all gone. He just wanted find a hole to disappear into, or hug his mom and never let go.

It was the cross-talk between his family, the excitement, the lost balls, chasing King; that’s what baseball was for him. At school, stepping to plate was like stepping into a court of law, hundreds of eyes knowing he would fail, and just wanting him to _get it over with already._

“Sometimes,” he blubbered, “I just tell myself I should strike-out on purpose so I don’t even have to deal with the embarrassment,” he sniffed, twisting his baseball cap in his hands.

Paula’s ears burned. This faux pas was of such astronomical proportions that she wished she could be picked up and thrown back into the jail cell in Peaceful Rest Valley. She had done something very wrong and she knew she wasn’t an adult because an adult wouldn’t have said that.

There are rules when it comes to helping at the preschool. The usual ones, like, only let the children use the plastic cups, roll a mat on the floor before finger-painting, naptime was always at 1pm and no later. And then there were obvious ones, like _don’t make the damn kid cry._ If mom isn’t there to help, just, get a toy, find a snack, jangle some keys, _anything._

“I get mad too easily,” she blurted.

Ness glanced at her, wiping snot with the collar of his shirt.

“I’m bad at taking advice,” Paula said. “Whenever someone tells me I’m wrong in a certain way I feel dumb and get mad. 'Cause I’m _not_ dumb. But, sometimes people make me feel like I am.” She filled the air with as many words as possible so they could talk about something – _anything_ – else.

“Like, one time I got to light the candles at the altar, and it was my first time,” Paula said. “They wouldn’t light though because I was holding the matches upside down. Which never struck me as wrong because even back then small fires didn’t burn me that much. But when Chaplain Wilkep saw me she got really indignant and said ‘You don’t know what you’re doing! I’ll do it.’ And it just made me so damn _mad._ ”

Ness sniffed. His face was still flushed, brow furrowed in confusion, but his tears had stopped. See? Distracted.

He spoke slowly. “So, what you’re saying is you don’t like being proved wrong?"

The redness from her ears spread to her cheeks and nose. Now they were just unpacking her own stuff. Dammit.

“No! Well, I mean—.” She streamlined her thoughts. Articulation was a matter of high importance to her. “I can be told I’m wrong, what I can’t be is told I did something wrong, but not _how_ it’s wrong, or _how_ it can be better. I mean, then what can I do? I’m completely helpless to do anything! I just feel dumb!”

She felt her face seething with heat. The words she had tried to fill the room with were deflating and hitting the floor pitifully. The dreadful silence of her own doing was deafening. This was too on the nose. She opened her mouth to apologise—

“I can understand that, yeah,” Ness said, chin rested on his knees. “Though I don’t think I get mad like that. It’s more… It’s more of a sad feeling for me. Like, no matter what I do, I’ll never be able to get it, you know? Just 'cause of how I am. Like, I remember this quote, um: ‘If you tell a goldfish that it’s bad because it can’t climb a tree, it’ll spend the rest of its life thinking it’s stupid.’ I feel a lot like that fish sometimes. Like people got a goldfish when they were expecting, I don’t know, Superman.”

Silence grew between them. Though an active one. Thoughts wove through both of their heads. It made them wring their hands. Wipe their faces. Scratch their arms. Then Paula spoke:

“I think it’s us.”

“What?” Ness said.

“I think it has to do with how you look at it. I think you just can’t let yourself feel certain ways. Or, at least do the best you can not to.”

“But it’s not that easy,” Ness said. “I can’t just _make_ myself stop feeling sad whenever I am.”

Paula met his eyes. “Neither could I. But I think it might to do with someone’s attitude. Like, when you feel like you’re getting sad, or when I feel like I’m getting angry, we just have to… have to.”

Paula’s flexed her fingers as she tried to think of how to say it. She slammed her hands on the floor, sprung to her feet, threw open the hotel window and hollered into the night air: _“I mean something!”_

Ness clapped his hands over his ears in shock. Paula turned her head, and he met her expectant gaze. Those fierce eyes. Encouraging him – no – _challenging_ him to join her.

Ness jumped to his feet, scooted next to her and roared: “ _I mean something too!”_

Paula retaliated, “ _I’m worthwhile!”_

 _“I work hard!”_  Ness cried.

_“I pick up after myself!”_

_“I always walk King everyday after school!”_

_“I basically run a preschool!”_

And the two went on and on. Launching their pride, their happiness, the brazen notion that they were proud to exist and dared to be alive on this piece of Earth.

“THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO LOVE ME.”

“THERE ARE ANIMALS WHO LOVE ME.”

“I’M LOVED!”

The pair screamed and bellowed and shrieked until they could barely speak above a whisper. Ignoring the chorus of startled dogs barking in the night, or the city buildings around them lighting up like a switch-board of disgruntled yellow squares, they fell on the hotel bed, breathing hard as the moonlight framed their faces. They fell asleep, content and defiant. Bold in their knowledge that they were worth something, and that this earth was better with their footprints on it.

**Author's Note:**

> I knowwwww Threed is meant to be overrun by zombies at this point in the game before they meet Jeff, but I forgot that detail when I was first writing the fic. Whoopsie ^^;


End file.
